I've just returned to Copenhagen after a great trip to Berlin and here's the first part of my comprehensive photo coverage from the town:

As a part of "project M" (curated by Yasha Young, who is the Director of art and culture for Gewobag, a company who will sponsors the space that will be build into a new museum inside this house - starting in 2014.), Melbourne Artist and part of the Everfresh collective RONE has painted the largest wall he has ever attempted, three massive images on the top three stories of a five-story building at Nollendorfplatz in Berlin. It took Rone five days to paint this excellent work.

SAN FRANCISCO --- The Bay Area art collective Futurefarmers are showcasing a sampling of their works and sculptures from their 20 year history in the show "Taking Stock" at Gallery 16 (running through Dec 31st) --- Pieces displayed are in their "exploded view" with works pulled apart.

Futurefarmers is an international artist collective practicing a form of cultural activism that exploits the interactive potential offered by new media and public spaces. Aligned around an "open practice of making work that is relevant to the time and space surrounding us," they create work that explores a variety of social and environmental issues.

Erratum

The fact that many Futurefarmers come from a background in commercial design and advertising might explain why they feel the need to make their art an enjoyable experience. They are conscious of the fact that "playing around" offers up a way to let down ones guard when dealing with serious issues.

David Choong Lee, Mario Martinez, Damon Soule, Eric Otto and others were commissioned by the Hyatt (345 Stockton St) here in San Francisco to create some beautiful works to adorn their hotel bar, resturant and lobby. If you're down by Union Square stop in, hava drink at the bar and enjoy these great paintings.

TORONTO ---
The finishing touches have been put on the large-scale, colorful and
dynamic public art work by Canadian-born Patrick McNeil along with his
art collaborator, Patrick Miller. Collectively known as FAILE, the
Brooklyn-based duo designed the football-field-sized mural, located on
Bathurst Street between Davenport and St. Clair in the city of Toronto.

Coordinated by Spectrum Art
Projects, the ambitious installation marks the first large-scale FAILE
mural in Canada. The images from their extensive archive were carefully
selected as a nod to the history and heritage of the installation’s
unique location, identifying the history of Aboriginal People's in the
neighborhood, and the Tollkeeper’s Cottage, believed to be the only
surviving tollgate from the 1800s in Canada.

“This
marks our fourth project in Toronto and FAILE's first major project in
Canada. We’re thrilled that Patrick and Patrick were able to create this
extraordinary piece – one that reflects the community and its history,”
say Simon Cole of Spectrum Art Projects. “It has been great to see the
neighborhood engaging with and embracing the installation and, now that
the mural is complete, the excitement is palpable. We’re certain this
piece will be an iconic addition to the area for years to come.”

FAILE is
a collaboration between Brooklyn-based artists, Patrick McNeil and
Patrick Miller. Since 1999, they have worked together as FAILE
constructing multimedia installations, large-scale paintings and
sculptures that have helped to change the perception of the Street Art
genre. The artists have been featured in several groundbreaking
international street art exhibitions, including Spank the Monkey at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead in 2006 and Street Art at
the Tate Modern, London in 2008. They also have exhibited in formal
galleries, including the Gagosian in Los Angeles, Lazarides Gallery in
London and Perry Rubenstein Gallery in New York.

Cartagena takes photographs in Monterrey, Mexico, documenting parts of everyday life there that he sees as depicting "a global issue from a local perspective." In a town that has a relatively new, booming construction market, Cartagena decided to document a side of the day laborers' lives that might not often be seen: the commute to and from work at various construction sites.

We had no idea what the hell Cosplay was when we first saw these images. Had a feeling it had something to do with Comic Con people who are really into their D&D/ mythical/ cartoon/ video game/ comic book characters and really enjoy playing dress up and getting into some serious role playing action... An extension of Furry fandom? In any event the Cosplay costumes can get very involved/ boobie.

These portraits of Cosplayers in their homes are taken by Klaus Pitchler and are part of his series Just the Two of Us. Below are just a few of our favorites. For more, be sure to check his site HERE.

COPENHAGEN --- US graffiti/ street artist/ letter/ design artist, Steve Powers just completed a mural project for the US Embassy in Copenhagen on a 55-meter long temporary wooden construction wall. Henrik brings us PHOTOS of Powers and his helpers working on the mural from the other day. PHOTOS

We wanted to do something different. The long, grey temporary construction wall in front of the Embassy building site provided us with a perfect opportunity, and V1 Gallery helped us identify just the right artist. With his mural, Steve pays tribute to a Danish icon, Hans Christian Andersen, whose stories many Americans grew up with, myself included" says Emily Ronek, Cultural Attaché, at the U.S. Embassy. "I am really excited about this, and I hope the thousands of Copenhageners who pass by the Embassy every day will enjoy this as a token of the great friendship between Denmark and the U.S. ~read on

Our friend Alex Ziv has been a very busy man. While most of the time you can find him locked away in his SFAI studio, his work has gotten to travel the world.

Ziv has achieved a milestone with his participation in a museum show called Brilliant Optics at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art (Indiana) showing alongside artists like Dabs Myla. The exhibition, based around the central theme of color, will be travelling to other venues throughout the country for the next three years, so keep your eyes open for it at a museum near you.

The Slovakian company Retart has also chosen Ziv's work to feature on wallets, sunglass cases, and scarves (soon), allowing his work to travel further via the pockets of his fans. Both the wallets and cases sold quickly at art fairs this summer, but you can get yours from their site. Clearly, no matter the medium, his work is being seen and loved by a lot of people and we're proud to say he's one of our own. --Rachel Ralph ~ rachel(at)fecalface.com

I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...

I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.

It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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